Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I hope you're having an enjoyable weekend... I am! I've been busy canning around 50 pounds of tomatoes, with the help of my mom and sister. We even squeezed in one quick batch of Vanilla Pears for my mom, this morning. It's been a lot of work, but well worth the effort!!

Link Love

Now that I've had some time to settle in and get caught up on the latest happenings online, I've found a handful of links for you to peruse this weekend. Enjoy!

• First up: Sweet and Savory Tomato Jam from Food52. I've never had tomato jam, but this one makes me want to try it!
• Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Pardon me, I may just faint. 
• Wait, what? Ricotta Ice Cream!
• I would love to make one of these quilts, with patches from all of the National Parks. 
• We don't have a glut of eggs yet, but we did get 7 from the ladies yesterday. So, this article on preserving eggs just might come in handy soon.  
• Forager|Chef: a new-to-me blog that makes me hungry. Really Hungry. 
• Roasted Figs with Goat Cheese and Honey! Oh hell yes.

Finally- a question for you, dear reader: What do you want to see more of? The gardening season is definitely starting to wind down; preserving will take over for a while, but even that is short-lived. Before we know it, Autumn and Winter will be here and with them comes "inside time". I want to make sure that this place stays relevant for you, so please, take a moment to leave me a comment here or on Facebook- I want to know how you pass the time during the winter! 

Friday Photos

What a week, folks...TGIF; I'm ready to put this one to bed! The rain started on Tuesday, and with it came a major fibro flare- a one-two punch combo that I really could do without. It'll pass soon; just need to ride it out for now. I did manage to get a few pictures taken, in between raindrops, though! Here's what it looked like:

Bee in Cucumber Flower... thank goodness it was sunny on Monday, at least!

Did you say... apples?

Nom, nom, nom,slobber. (I had no idea cattle were so... drooly.)

The tomato forest. So far, I've eaten three cherry tomatoes and
picked 2 full-sized ones. YAY!

The new yarn, on the loom. You can't see how shiny it is from this picture, but
it's going to be gorgeous when it's finished. More to come!

Glacier National Park, here we come!

Around the Web

Peeping Chicken. One of the lesser-known
perils of having a home office. 

One of the (many) nice things about making apple butter is that it takes a long time to do it right. Cooking it slow and low, until all of the sugars and flavors condense down...not only does it make for good food, but having a pot on the stove means I can justify staying inside and surfing the internet for interesting stuff.
Plus, the house smells heavenly...

• Some of the new girls should start laying eggs for us any day, now. Read this piece from The Chicken Chick to see how I can tell. 

• While we're talking about roasted tomatoes- I totally want to make up a batch of this salsa.

• I have big plans for the spring. (Seriously, I try to live in the moment, but... there's always a list!) This post from Chism Heritage Farm is going in my prep file for raising meat birds next year. 

• Do you make your own yogurt? I do, and I've often wondered if heating the milk first was really necessary... check out NW Edible Life for the answer.  

• I'm always on the lookout for new blogs to read... CraftyPod is my current rabbit hole. Check out her tutorial videos on English Paper Piecing!

• It's peak blackberry time here. This scone recipe from Fat of the Land looks wonderful!

• Here's another new-to-me blog, called Twill Power. Lots of great weaving info and inspiration! Speaking of weaving... I'm going to be warping my loom today, for a new project. You know, since I'm tethered to the stove and all. ;-)

Time to process some more apples. Oh! Speaking of apples... the cider is starting to ferment- there's foam building and I even saw my first bubble from the airlock today. The test batch is totally old school- wild yeast only. Cross your fingers!

Have you come across anything interesting this week? Share it with me over on Facebook!

Friday Photos

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing weekend planned.

It's been another busy one here, so I'm just going to get right to the week in photos:

Echinacea

Fig!!

Psst... Maggie- it's finished!

Fledgling Robin. Saw it yesterday as Mom walked it farther away from the chickens.
 Looks to be doing well!

GIANT SLUG

'Cause I'm Happy...

Potato farm up the road.

Tomato Jungle!

Volunteer potatoes. One plant... 12 tubers. Woo Hoo!

And since I wasn't able to post yesterday's usual collection of links (hello, migraine), here are a couple of links that I had set aside as interesting:

• We don't have tomato hornworms here, but I understand they're quite the problem in some places. If you happen to be in one of those areas (Hi Karen!), you may find this article from Hobby Farms helpful.
• Speaking of tomatoes... here's a handful of recipes from Gardener's Supply. That Bloody Mary mix sure looks good!

Is your garden starting to wind down or are you still running to keep up with harvesting your goodies? Pop on over to Facebook and let me know!

Grit Post

Happy GRIT day, everyone!

I'm running a little behind schedule today, but the new post has been uploaded to their server and should be live a little bit later. I'm talking about my mild Pacific Northwest garden and what I do to boost the temperatures around my heat-loving plants.

Hope to see you there!

Around the Web

Last Year. Hoping for a repeat!

I spent yesterday afternoon in the garden, so I'm a little behind on getting my link list together. Without further ado, however... here you go!

Washington peeps- The Plant Farm up here in Smokey Point is having a huge sale on veggies now through this weekend. I picked up a bunch of really nice veggies yesterday, and pretty much finished planting out the garden- I still have a few seeds left to plant, though. Even if you don't live nearby, they have a lot of really good info on their website, between their blog and various articles. Check them out!


I am so making this tart as soon as tomato season happens here. And, I totally adore Helene's photography.

As always, Marisa has great info- this time, it's how to store that fresh produce from the farmer's market without plastic bags. Excellent!

It's humming bird time at the house! We counted between 6 and 8 birds flying around the feeders the other evening, and at least 3 different species. I found this poster to help us ID the birds, and I've bookmarked the FeederWatch website for future reference. Pretty cool!

I apparently have tomatoes on the brain. Mine are *finally* starting to take off; I put them in the ground about a month ago and it's just not staying warm enough for them to do much. So, I built a little greenhouse of sorts over them, using some stakes, PVC pipe and plastic sheeting- and voila! they're growing again. This post from Roger over at KGI gives me some ideas to ponder before they get too big.

It looks like I might actually get some quince from our tree this year, so I've bookmarked this recipe from the ever-helpful David Lebovitz, just in case. If you have a quince recipe, do share. Please?

What's caught your eye this week? Let me know!